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I've seen more than my fair share of color problems in older photos, and this
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is a very good example of the type of problems that I run into from time to time.
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I'm not sure if this was caused by damage after the print had been placed into a
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photo album or if perhaps there had been some light leakage on the original
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transparency, the original negative. But whatever the cause, I have this
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orange blob over on the left side of the frame, and I'd obviously like to correct
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that color. You can see that that discoloration is
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not affecting the texture in the photo. We can still see, for example, the grass
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texture back here. It's only affecting the color.
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So, I'm going to alter the color in the photo in order to improve the result.
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I'll start off by adding a new layer. I'll click on the Create New Layer button.
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The blank sheet of paper icon at the bottom of the Layers panel.
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And then I'll rename this layer, simply by double-clicking on the name for the
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layer and typing something new. I'll just type Color Fix, for example,
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and then press Enter or Return on the keyboard.
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I also want to make sure to change the Blend mode for this layer.
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I don't want to paint pixels directly on top of my photo, but rather I want to
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paint pixels that will only alter the color of the underlying image.
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An so I'm going to change the Blend mode, to color.
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Next, I'll grab the Brush tool from the toolbox, and then I'll make sure that I'm
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working with a soft edge brush. I'm going to use a Hardness value of 0%.
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Then I can move my mouse out over the image and adjust the brush size as
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needed, pressing the key to reduce the size of the brush, or the key to
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increase the size of the brush. I then need to find a color that I'm
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going to paint with. And we'll start off with a shade of green
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that matches the grass. And so, with my Brush tool active, I'm
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going to hold the Alt key on Windows, or the Option key on Macintosh while
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clicking on an area of the grass. Holding the Alt or Option key with the
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Brush tool activate will give me the Eyedropper tool temporarily.
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And as you can see, then clicking in the image has set my foreground color to the
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color that was underneath the mouse. Now, I'm ready to paint into this area of
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the image. The area has this reddish orange color
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cast, and I'm going to replace that color with a shade of green taken from directly
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within the photo. So, I know the color is going to match
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reasonably well. I'll go ahead and paint that color into
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the photo. Ideally only painting on areas of grass.
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You can see that some of these areas don't quite match up as well as I would
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have liked. I think the color I chose just wasn't
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quite right for portions of the grass here.
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But that's no problem. I can simply hold the Alt or Option key
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once again. And click in another area of the image.
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And find a different shade of grass, a different shade of green to be used
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within the photo. And I can continue in this manner as
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needed, painting what I feel is a more appropriate color into specific areas of
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the photo. Of course, in this case I'm only working
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on the grass. I still need to deal with the elbow here.
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The jacket has been discolored as well. And so I'll go ahead and hold the alt or
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option key and click on the jacket. And then click and drag to paint on
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portions of that jacket. You can see that I've overlapped into the
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grass area. And so I can simply choose a shade of
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green from the grass and then paint a little bit more carefully along that edge.
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There we go. So, obviously not a perfect result, but
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I'm making progress here. I can continue working in terms of
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sampling the colors, but let's take a look at what I've done thus far.
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I'll go ahead and turn off the background image layer, and you can see the various
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shades of green that I've painted within the image.
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I've actually just been painting a solid color.
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But because I'm using the color blend mode Only the color of the underlying
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image is being affected. I'm not adjusting tonality, and
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therefore, I'm not altering the texture. So I'll go ahead and turn off the
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visibility for that color fix layer, and then turn it back on again.
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You can see probably a few areas that aren't a perfect match, but I can
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continue fine-tuning those. But obviously, I've already made a huge improvement.
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So, simply by painting colors that already exist within the photo using that
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color blend mode, we can very quickly and easily correct color problems in a photo.